by Reid Fitzsimons

I’m a white male, so I have white male pride. I’m taller than average, so I have taller than average pride. I’m a white male raised in the suburbs, so I have taller than average white male suburban pride. I demand “pride months” and that people chant “white male suburban taller than average rights are human rights!” You might respond, “Isn’t pride supposed to be based on some kind of accomplishment, especially one that took some effort and maybe even a little sacrifice? You can’t really be proud of merely being who you are based on skin color or height or whatever. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be okay with what or who you are, it just has nothing to do with pride.” And I say, “What are you, some hate-filled cisgender fascist who supports the oppressive meritocracy, a backward thinker who believes actual accomplishment is better than being wonderful simply because you feel you are? You’re just like Hitler!”

I first met Vivian in a tiny Honduran village in 2008. My wife and I had opened a little project for children of the village a year before and we were fortunate to have many volunteers, mostly young people from the US, Canada, and Europe. One of these had befriended one of teenage attendees, Myra, and visited Myra’s house, a typical single room mud and stick hut with a dirt floor and without electricity. Our volunteer from Belgium asked me the next day if we knew Myra had a little sister who was dying. We did not, so I soon visited there myself and encountered 2½ year-old Vivian, who was hairless, had lots of scars on her body, and weighed 11 pounds. Her beleaguered mother was holding Vivian and constantly shifting her from breast to breast in a largely futile attempt to feed her: mom was simply dry, and Vivian was simply starving to death.